Dedicated to the Cargo Cults of Biology Science, Biotechnology and the Pharmaceutical Industry.
"So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science"
Richard Feynman,
Cargo Cult Science,
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974

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Saturday, December 03, 2016

History of the Narrative

Respect for the truth!The narrative, as defined by Wikipedia, is "any report of connected events, real or imaginary, presented in a sequence of written or spoken words, and/or still or moving images." Bullshit is defined as, "is mostly a slangprofanity term meaning "nonsense", especially as a rebuke in response to communication or actions viewed as deceptive, misleading, disingenuous, unfair or false." Communicating ones scientific research is a narrative. It becomes BS when the communicators are deceptive, misleading and so on. OK. Serepta offered up a narrative to the FDA. The FDA told the rest of us that Sereptas narrative was not BS and approved the drug. Some disagreed. We covered that in the last post and time will let us know if the Serepta narrative is BS or not. In fact it seems that Janet Woodcocks approach was to approve the drug to find out. It's not the best way forward and here is why.Juno!I've talked the fateful airplane trip that introduced Lawrence Corey of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center with David Fallace of the Alaska Permanent Fund. These two got Juno off the ground leaving the details to be filled in by the cargo cult scientists of Seattle. The unemployed tribesmen were gathered and put back into the watch towers with their coconut and stick antenna headsets. Once again they fired up the ceremonies of another biotech pharmaceutical company. The end result is death and destruction. It is a very interesting scientific development. Unlike the DNA manipulation that is the narrative of Sereptas Exondys 5, something very powerful is happening with Junos JCAR015. In July of this year the clinical trial known as ROCKET was put on hold after two patients died from a cerebral edema. The deaths were attributed to a protocol change (cargo cult alert!) that added fludarabine (chemotherapy) to the treatment. Juno convinced the FDA that fludarabine caused the deaths and the FDA let them continue on. The cold hard reality cut into that narrative. Since restarting the ROCKET trial 12 patients have been tested. two more patients have died of the same issue, cerebral edema. Take away the emotion of judging the FDA and Juno. What is happening? What would the mechanism of action be with CAR-T therapy directed at CD19 in patients with B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (B-ALL)?In a Utopian world we would set a team of scientist on the case. What is happening. In the cargo cults we tend to focus on getting the endpoints (the cargo) we want. When we don't get them we try other avenues without understanding the basic science. We pursue the narrative even when BS has presented itself. Brian Orelli of Motley Fool pointed out, "Fortunately, Juno has other CAR-T cancer treatments, JCAR014 and JCAR017, in particular, which appear to be safer, and JCAR015 might still be useful in patients with other blood cancers, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. While this issue may be specific to JCAR015 and late-stage ALL, investors in Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, Kite Pharma, and Bluebird should keep in mind that CAR-T is largely uncharted territory that could result in other unanticipated issues with their treatments."So we keep on keeping on and wait to see who else dies. The patients are in bad condition coming into the trials. This is a part of the bigger problem of treating end of life conditions as diseases we can cure. This is a narrative and it is BS. People being turned into patients for biopharma greed is what we are witnessing. If Juno, Bellicum, Kite and Bluebird can statistically demonstrate longer life (quality of life is not an issue) they can make money. So far Juno has demonstrated the opposite.

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My biotech career is merely a dream. In this dream we are all living on an Island where our ancestors once watched the westerners develop drugs that helped their people fight off disease and suffering. The westerners left and we are now donning their white lab coats and trying to create the drugs ourselves. We have their books, labs, beakers and a handful of drug targets they left behind. But nothing is working.